PM Orbán’s main challenger, Péter Magyar: Hungary deserves better than 3,000 robbers, calls Orbán old emperor
“Let us lay the cornerstones of our homeland’s future together,” the leader and MEP of the opposition Tisza Party said at a commemoration of Hungary’s 1848-49 revolution and freedom fight on Saturday, announcing that his party will seek the opinion of Hungarians in a survey dubbed “Voice of the Nation” containing 12 plus 1 questions.
Voice of the Nation details
The party, he said, will organise the largest ever common movement, allowing every Hungarian citizen older than 16 to say what kind of Hungary they want. “I ask every Hungarian for whom family, their home and their homeland are important, to participate in our referendum dubbed Voice of the Nation,” Magyar told the event in Budapest. “Let us lay the cornerstones of our homeland’s future together and let us decide about the following questions together,” he said. “Let us set the tasks of the next Hungarian government together.”
The questionnaire contains 12 plus 1 questions and can be filled out in person or online by April 11, the party leader said. Preliminary registration is already available at THIS website , he added.
“History is in the hands of those who are brave enough to take action to answer the call when the time comes,” Magyar said. “Our time is now; we’re the ones laying the bricks to build up our homeland.” A year ago, he said, “a whole new era began”. “We said that we are no longer willing to live in fear in our own country.”
Health, happiness, self-fulfillment and dignity
“A year ago the message of the revolution made us committed and brave,” Magyar said. “Since then, the slogan of spring, change and hope has been Tisza,” he said, adding that “patriotic Hungarians continue to dream the dream of the March revolutionaries”. “The March revolutionaries never gave and never give up. We are the March revolutionaries,” he said, adding that it did not matter “how old we are or where we live, what matters is that we want to do something for our country”.
“Our rules are simple: we love our home, Hungary,” Magyar said. “We consider it our eternal right that we shall define together the pillars of our common life”. He called the Hungarian nation “indivisible”, vowing that “like it or not, Tisza will reunite the nation”. Magyar said Hungary’s place was in a strong Europe where the country was respected, valued and regarded as an ally by its neighbours.
He called health, happiness, self-fulfillment and dignity the most important values, saying that “a successful country can only be built together, by joining our forces”. “Homeland and progress, those are what we believe in,” Magyar said.
“Hungary wants to be alive again. Spring has kicked in, it is the spring of Hungarians and together we will end the Orbán winter,” he said. “We, Hungarians actually want peace, here at home, and also in the world,” he said. “We really do mean it seriously that there should be peace, freedom and accord.”
Promises of Tisza
He said that if Tisza got into power it would join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office with immediate effect, declare “zero tolerance of all forms of corruption”, establish an independent anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, set up a separate investigative unit within tax and customs authority NAV and double the punishment for corruption-related crimes.
Magyar also vowed that a Tisza government would “restore the independence of the judiciary”, “close the gender pay gap”, restore people’s right to choose their doctor and midwife and “take steps to curb domestic violence”. Tisza would also introduce an exemption from paying personal income tax for those over the age of 65, scrap the VAT on medicines and introduce a SZÉP voucher card for pensioners with an annual top-up of 200,000 forints, he said.
“There’s a cost-of-living crisis today, which requires immediate action,” Magyar said. He vowed that Tisza would address the crisis immediately and “rein in the Orbán inflation”. “We’ll work to bring home the EU funds of which every Hungarian is entitled to 800,000 forints,” he added. He said his party was asking for “a real alliance and a real mandate so that we don’t just have a change of government but a real change of regime”.
Former Armed Forces chief
Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, the former chief of staff, said the government “doesn’t understand the interests of the Hungarian people or the armed forces“. He insisted that “instead of caring for the Hungarian people, they oppress them and keep them living in fear, and punish anyone whose opinion differs from the truth of the state party”.
He said recent government measures only served “to hurt morale in the armed forces, which comes close to the notion of treason”. “Improving the living and working conditions of our men and women in uniform is inevitable,” Ruszin-Szendi said. “Even more so because the country’s security and the safety of the people depends on the defence forces.”
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